Bhutto Reaction: Fear and Dismay

Pakistan is a country that could easily slip into chaos, even civil war. … The painful irony for the U.S. government and other nations who have supported [Mr.] Musharraf is that while he bears most of the blame from the public, he is also the only person standing between violent chaos and order at the moment. – Michael Hirsh, Newsweek

“…Everything has been thrown off balance,” said Anwer Sher, a Pakistani banker based in Dubai. “Until the situation settles down, investors are going to be skittish, if not downright reluctant to pour more money into an economy that suddenly plunged into a political crisis of this dimension.” — Portfolio.com

What kind of woman survives multiple assassination attempts and persists in attending huge political rallies in an open vehicle? Perhaps if your father and brothers are killed all around you, that starts to feel quite normal. – Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

The one question that [Mr.] Musharraf is not likely to try to answer is whether he is the right man to lead Pakistan to democracy, having bequeathed it the rise of the Islamist militants and their horrific terrorism that is threatening to tear the country apart. — Shuja Nawaz, Huffington Post

“The single most tragic person in all of Pakistan – maybe all the world – is Nusrat Bhutto. Benazir’s mother. Think about it. Her husband, killed. One son poisoned. Another son assassinated. One daughter dead possibly of drug overdose. Another daughter rises to be prime minister twice, but jailed, exiled, and finally gunned down.” – Adil Najam, founding editor, All Things Pakistan

…New uncertainties weight heavily in Pakistan. One concerns the future of the [Pakistan People’s Party], which may not survive without a Bhutto at the helm. Without the PPP, or something much like it, Pakistan may have no easily imaginable secular and democratic future. – the Economist

It is worth looking back at a previous attempt on [Ms.] Bhutto’s life — not that of Oct. 18 this year but back in the early 1990s, when Ramzi Yousef, now in prison in America for trying to blow up the Twin Towers, attempted to assassinate her. That scheme involved local criminal elements, senior Islamic militants from the Gulf, a local Afghan hard-line commander with Saudi Arabian links, [Mr.] Yousef himself and money from overseas. A similar combination may be behind this murder. It is unlikely, sadly, that we will ever really know. – Jason Burke, the Guardian (U.K.)

Comments (5 of 6)

One can't even rule out the possibility of the PPP being behind the assassination. Fanatical idealists may have wanted to rid the party of this corrupt family dynasty, to destroy the foundation and rebuild as a truly credible and effective populist movement.